Baltic Air - The journey Home

The Journey Home - Baltic Air

This article first appeared in the Historic Lifeboat Owners Newsletter in 2004 with kind permission of John Church

It’s 04.30 a.m. in Southwold Harbour, new acquisition, the decks are wet from a deluge half an hour before, warps limp and damp, dawn still some way off and it’s cold dark and still, I shiver. The sound of thunder out at sea offers a doom laden quality to the dawn, an appropriate setting for a first-time departure and nerves are at full stretch. Room ahead, 2 feet, room astern 3 feet. In this quiet time switching on the batteries activates a harpies chorus of alarms round the boat so deafening they must have the entire river awake. Roy has never been to sea in a lifeboat or been to sea with me, he seems unconcerned, is it only me?

Light up the engines and wait for the revs to settle to an even rhythm, pressures OK, navigation lights on, let go everything except an aft spring, tide takes us back against it and a touch on the bow thruster starts us away from the quay. Then the moment of truth, "let go aft spring", both ahead slow. We creep past the (hopefully) still sleeping residents, no lights have come on to mark any interest in our passing, follow the rules, keep hard up against the north bank, past the knuckle and move slowly towards the centre of the stream. Out onto a grey sea and for the first time I feel the movement of the boat as she gives to the swell. Increase revs to 1000, set course for the first mark and we’re away! No insurance claims so far.

Dawn comes up as we move away from the coast, I’ve been warned about the pots between Southwold and Harwich and decide on an offshore course east of the NE Whiting cardinal and keeping about four miles off. Wind on our port quarter about force 4, just enough to know we’re at sea, and I love the feel of a boats movement when the winds astern. As we approach the crossing point on the channel to Harwich the sun comes out to greet us, and moving upstream on the Orwell towards Levington the Harbour Authority launch makes a detour to wave to us, and later a very expensive looking yacht with the skipper tooled up in all the right gear passes us heading down river and makes the "perfect" sign to us as he passes.

I’m complimented, though I don’t deserve it, and pleased that the reaction is something like that which I had hoped for the day I decided to buy a lifeboat. This first passage is a short unambitious 36 miles, and is completed with some help from the tide in four hours and twenty minutes from Southwold Harbour to Levington Marina. There are a number of reasons for the short journey, a car left at Southwold had to be recovered, a short first passage is sensible in an untried boat, and another reason my wife has censored me from mentioning. We refuel with 224 litres at Levington and take Baltic Air out to a river mooring to await sector two.

Roy and I reconvene at Liverpool Street station a week later and make a somewhat perilous journey across the Orwell in an inflatable with a dodgy engine, trying to move us across against the full ebb. It seems to me an even bet whether the blue exhaust fumes or the tide will do for us, but we make it and bring Baltic Air into the marina to do some engine room jobs, and because I don’t fancy another trip across the river for dinner, or still less going back after dark.

Another dawn and another departure, next stage Dover and this time nerves are much less in evidence, I even have time to enjoy it, and Roy has our first mugs of tea ready with toast and marmalade for the inner man, before we reach the sea. It’s old fashioned pilotage to the Cork Sand Beacon and then it’s over to the Magellan for a course via the Roughs Tower, Long Sand Head, and the Kentish Knock, don’t you just love autopilots? Out at sea the promised Force 4 doesn’t seem to have heard the news, it’s virtually flat and when the sun comes out Roy and I take to the deck chairs, while a less than busy seascape unfolds, it makes watching paint dry seem unnecessarily active.

The previous owner has left a weird shaped can of Vegetable, lamb and pearl barley soup on board and we heat it up for lunch with doorsteps of "buppy", it really sticks to the sides and is just what this particular Doctor ordered. (Stockmeyer brand – since discovered by Roy for sale at Safeways). A couple of creeping container ships avoided later and we’re in the Gul Stream inside the Goodwins on the short cut to Dover. Being a fan of the Hero of the Nile I have always wanted to anchor for a night in The Downs as The Fleet used to do. Also, having read R T McMullens "Down Channel" where he writes of 200 coasting vessels riding out a storm seaward of him there, one gets some idea of the numbers of trading vessels that were needed to keep the country going, as well as the number of now deserted places that were once popular and essential along our coasts to avoid storms or await tides. It must wait for another occasion as we must get on.

A call to Port Control at Dover requesting access to his Eastern Entrance brings the response that we are to head for his goldfish bowl on the Eastern Breakwater and await instructions. I’m amused to see on arrival there a giant sign saying, DOVER. Is it so "illegals" in borrowed rowing boats will know where they are, or perhaps for first-timer French ferry boat drivers? We are instructed what to do and the Marina tells us where to go. We are warmly greeted by members of the lifeboat crew who could not have been kinder. GPS says 64.1 miles done. I then proceeded to try and kill Roy with a Fray Bentos pie, (cremated to port and raw to starboard), served with peas and stabbing hard potatoes. I went for a shower and Roy took his indigestion for a kip.

It was at this point that I almost lost my crew to the railway. I’m now back from the shower and trying rest, but since we are planning to move on at first light the fuel state starts to niggle, and I know I won’t rest and must check it. Clouting the tank-spanner to free it from its storage makes enough noise to wake the dead, and stamping about the deck dipping the tanks brings a very disgruntled Roy to the surface where he has a "turn" at his beauty sleep being so disturbed. I apologise and go off to call Quinton to discuss the state of my wet dipstick, in the process of which I call him "Nelson", which is embarrassing, especially since I didn’t realise it ‘till the next day, and anyway I hate The Archers. Tiredness is my only excuse, but sleep does come my way and neither of us rises until after five o’clock, the hour at which we were supposed to be at sea.

Another day and still no wet decks! Flat calm and a hazy N Force 2/3 during which for most of the morning nothing at all happens of note, except that energising myself enough to make periodic "x marks the spot" messes on my chart I discover I’ve entered the numbers for Royal Sovereign into the box wrongly and have to make a course correction. Sorry no sea monsters or giant waves to report. However on reaching Royal Sovereign I smell gas, and since it’s switched off Roy says "batteries" and we shut down everything, lift the access hatches and "woof" the smell knocks our heads off; batteries boiling is the cause. An hour passes while we investigate, read manuals, read tea leaves, and make our way back up the channel at half a knot per hour.

The battery system on Baltic Air is a mystery known to someone but unknown to us, and even when working properly it displays an idiosyncratic eccentricity all its own. Turn on the starboard isolator and the starboard engine will start, nothing else will work. Turn on the port isolator and nothing will work. Turn on both, everything will work, the coupling light is illuminated, and we all charge together!

Eventually for want of anything more sensible to do Roy disconnects the port alternator, only because it’s easier than starboard, but it’s a lucky choice because it later turns out to be shoving 40 volts into the batteries and is the source of our discomfort. We restart the engines and divert to Brighton and en route we pass the main sewage outfall, marked by a buoy but it doesn’t need it. It can be identified by a carpet of seagulls, obviously a popular meeting place. "Hey George, what are you doing this afternoon", "Oh I’m going down to the sewage outfall for a treat, coming"? On arrival in Brighton we leave "Baltic Air" to have her electrical system tested, and for faults to be found and rectified.

Eight days pass, and still nobody has been on my boat. I’m feeling a bit vexed about it and starting to get noisy on the phone. The contractor passes my job to someone else, who it turns out comes with references from a friend, and having found the fault we agree he will remove the alternator for a re-build and we will go on with one. A pity about the delay and the berthing costs wasted, but worse things happen at sea, (if not on this trip). Another day and another meeting between Roy and I, this time on Brighton station, and we have company in the form of Chris Rosamond (Lloyds) coming along for the ride as he lives in Hove. We do finally get the decks wet, though I think it must have been the wash of a passing freighter for again the weather is kind to us, and we slip through the Owers and round to the north of all the marks into Portsmouths main channel via the back door. We had left at 13.00 and arrived at Haslar Marina at 18.30 where I said goodbye to the crew. It was always my intention to use Baltic Air from time to time single handed, and I thought it was time to test this out before lifting out of the water, so having been "stiffed" thirty three quid for a night in the marina I left without problems to catch the tide for Yarmouth. 10.2 knots at 950 revs, wow!

I arrived at 7.30 and had no difficulty berthing. Spent some time with another lifeboat owner who had first shown me the pleasures of being a Watson owner, and had some good advice from one of the lifeboat crew before catching the tide back to Southampton where I arrived before lunch at "Saxon ‘arf", the letters "wh" having suffered in the Fawlty Towers manner. I had put out port side fenders and made warps ready but the tide in the river was carrying me off the pontoon too fast to make fast, so being too idle to swap the fenders over I went out into the stream, turned round and reversed onto a berth on the inside end of the upstream pontoon where I left her to be lifted.

John Church

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